CRC funded reports

2000-2001

The Council received six reports of completed research projects during the year.
Summaries of these reports are given below. These reports are held by the Australian Institute of Criminology's
JV Barry Library and are available on inter-library loan. For full bibliographic information on any
report, search the Library's Catalogue.

Crime in rural Australia has been a little-studied phenomenon. A two-part
comprehensive analysis of crime in rural Australia sought to address the neglect
of research into this important issue. In Part 1, quantitative analyses of
census data and crime rates across 122 rural Local Government Areas in New South
Wales highlighted the extraordinary diversity among rural communities in
Australia. Crime rates were found to be clearly related to social structures
that varied across identifiable types of geographic locations. Based on analyses
of demographic variables, it was apparent that factors that imply greater
community cohesion and integration were linked to less crime. Conversely,
communities with lower cohesion and integration had more crime. Social
disorganisation theory proved to be a suitable orientation for organising and
interpreting these analyses.

In Part 2, qualitative analyses complimented and supported the quantitative
analyses. Case studies were conducted in four rural communities which were
differentiated according to the social, demographic and crime profiles revealed
in the quantitative analysis. Residents' perceptions of the incidence and types
of crime and other social problems experienced in each region were compared.
Factors that intervened between the success or failure of the residents to cope
with crime were explored. More cohesive and integrated communities experienced
less crime. Their residents perceived fewer community problems and were more
involved with overcoming social problems that occurred in them. Conversely, more
fragmented communities had more crime and other social problems. There appeared
to be no real evidence of fear of crime among rural residents. Unemployment and
the loss of services in rural areas were their primary concerns. Crime was
generally regarded as a consequence of these social problems.

An investigation of the role of resiliency-promoting factors in preventing adverse life outcomes during adolescence

This study explored some aspects of the lives of 71 young people judged to be
"at risk". Thirty-eight of these young people were identified as demonstrating
"resilient" behaviour and 33 were identified as displaying "non-resilient"
behaviour. Important differences were discovered between the two groups in terms
of the way they talked about events and people in their lives, what they valued,
what they regretted and how they saw the future.

The study recommends a "youth development" approach when working with
young people. Evaluations of overseas intervention programs have shown that a
resilience orientation rather than a problem-prevention orientation is much more
likely to be effective in reducing the whole range of risky behaviours,
including delinquency and antisocial behaviour. It suggests that major
strategies in any resilience-oriented intervention program for young people need
to address:

the development of personal agency and autonomy;

the development of achievement, mastery and competence;

the development of connectedness and nurturance;

the development of a positive future orientation.

These strategies should be implemented in the home/family, the school and the
local community.

The effectiveness of criminal sanctions: a natural experiment

This study examined data from New South Wales local courts between 1992 and
1997. Using a natural experimental design, it compared cohorts of offenders
appearing before magistrates within the 21 courts where random allocation of
offenders was used. Variations in sentencing mix between magistrates within each
court provided the basis for the analysis. In general, sanctions made very
little difference to reoffending rates. However prison had a detectable
influence on reoffending for more serious offenders (for example, offenders
convicted of burglary or vehicle theft with a prior record), increasing
reoffending rates by several percentage points relative to community sanctions.

There was also an apparent "incapacitation effect" resulting from being
incarcerated for more than six months; offenders make up for their lost
offending opportunities within three years of sentence. For the least serious
offenders (such as those convicted on one count of using cannabis), bonds or
dismissals reduced reoffending levels compared to fines.

In the middle range of sanctions, the impact of fines and community sanctions
were similar. Despite various limitations of the data, the study provided an
insight into the small but useful ways sentencing policies can contribute to a
reduction of crime in the community.

Shame management and social reintegration for bullies and victims in ACT schools: the prism project

The report for this project is titled "From Bullying to Responsible Citizenship:
A Restorative Approach to Building Safe School Communities". The project
examines the shame management strategies of bullies and victims in ACT primary
schools. The project was based on Ahmed's (2000) findings that shame management
was central to our understanding of bullying and victimisation in schools.
Bullies do not acknowledge shame but displace it. Victims do acknowledge shame
but feel rejected by others. The project followed up on this work in two ways.
First, a follow-up of the original sample asked how shame management related to
bullying and victimisation over time. The findings supported that shame
management strategies did vary with changes in bullying and victimisation
behaviour. Second, an intervention program for primary schools (The Responsible
Citizenship Program) was developed. It aimed to help children learn more
effective ways of managing their shame when a wrongdoing had occurred in the
school. The evaluation of this program, by all involved, was positive in terms
of learning outcomes. Of particular importance were the changes in shame
management strategies that were found.

An evaluation of anger management programs with violent offenders in two Australian states (volumes 1 and 2)

This report described a large number of findings. The studies confirm that high
levels of anger exist in the prison population, so effective anger management
programs are required. The anger management programs studied are, in general,
producing very small effects, though the changes are in the right direction. Few
statistically significant changes occur from pre- to post- group assessments,
with the exception of improved anger knowledge. The treated groups do not
improve significantly more than the untreated control group.

The general conclusion is that anger management programs have only a very modest
impact in general but that some particular offenders benefit more than others.
For this reason the report has recommended a constructive, developmental
approach whereby the improvements brought about by anger management
interventions can be enhanced. The future targeting of treatment on suitable
participants appears to be the way forward.

Across the four experiments that make up the Reintegrative Shaming Experiments
project (RISE), very different results have emerged for the different offence
categories. In the youth violence experiment, those offenders who were assigned
to conference subsequently offended at substantially lower levels-38 fewer
offences per year per 100 offenders-than did the offenders assigned to court.
This was not true for any of the other experiments. For drink-driving offenders,
a very small increase in detected reoffending was found for the conferenced
offenders relative to court-about four offences per offender per year per 100
offenders.

The methodological conclusion of this five-year project is that
multiple randomised trials are advisable for testing a new method of justice.
The design of RISE anticipated the possibility of detecting different effects
for different types of offences. That still remains the most plausible account
of the differences reported, as opposed to differences by type of offender
background. Further research should continue to break out different offence
types for testing, rather than lumping diverse offence types together. The
substantive conclusion of RISE is that restorative justice can work, and can
even reduce crime by violent offenders. But there is no guarantee that it will
work for all offence types. Caution and more research are needed before rapid
expansion of any new approach to treating crime. Less caution is needed,
however, in testing restorative justice on more serious types of violent
offences. The findings in this report provide firm ground for repeating the
violence experiment in many other venues and with more refined types of violent
offences, including robbery, assault and grievous bodily harm.